Race Definition In Anthropology
By the 17th century the term began to refer to physical phenotypical traits.
Race definition in anthropology. Anthropologist marisol de la cadena eloquently describes this shift. The early history of academic anthropology and the wider human sciences is pervaded by efforts to draw a causal link between race and behavior psychology culture or social organization. The history of anthropology has been closely identified with the study of race. A race is a great division of mankind the members of which though individually varying are characterized as a group by a certain combination of morphological and metrical features which ones principally non adaptive which have been derived from their common descent.
One of the most important tasks of anthropologists is the examination of the biological and cultural variability that exists within humanity. The academic repudiation of biological notions of race was significant for anthropology as it meant the emergence of the concept of ethnic groups to explain human differences it implied the reification of culture which thus potentially prolonged the naturalization of sociohistorical differences earlier contained in the european notion of biological race p. Race culturally constructed label that crudely and imprecisely describes real variation john relethford race and global patterns of phenotypic variation 2009 20 but crude labels are socially and historically real influencing access opportunities and outcomes. Anthropology was sometimes referred to as the science of race during the eighteenth and nine teenth centuries when physical anthropologists sought a biological basis for categorizing humans into racial types 1 since world war ii important research by anthropologists has revealed that racial categories are socially and culturally defined concepts and that racial labels and their definitions vary widely around the world.
The study of race has defined anthropology since its formalization as an academic discipline in the 19th century. Race is a loaded word in part because people use that word in very different ways but assume that they are talking about the same thing. Race is a cultural construct that groups people together based on perceived biological similarities. This definition does not apply to homo sapiens.
A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into categories generally viewed as distinct by society. In the biological sciences a race is a geographically related subdivision of a species gezen and kottak 2014. Anthropologists often use the word race as well. With even greater health effects than ancestry.
The term was first used to refer to speakers of a common language and then to denote national affiliations.